India’s relations with its northern neighbour have been passing through an extremely difficult period since the summer of 2020. India has taken the position that the state of the border will determine the state of its relations with China; until normalcy is restored along the line of actual control (LAC), overall relations cannot return to the normal track.
China, on the other hand, would like us to accept the changed situation in the border areas as the “new normal”, move on and resume normal interactions in other domains. Our interlocutors in the Chinese strategic community are suggesting that we strive for a “reset” in bilateral relations.
Is reset a feasible proposition? To begin with, the two sides no longer agree on the paradigm that governed the relationship over the past three decades. Chinese scholars argue that both countries had agreed to delink the development of bilateral relations from the resolution of the boundary question; and that India has broken that compact by linking the broader relationship with progress on the border issue.
There is dissimulation in the Chinese argument. What the Chinese deliberately ignore is that the maintenance of peace and tranquillity was acknowledged by both sides as an “essential prerequisite” and an “important guarantor” for the continued growth of bilateral relations, predicated on adherence to the provisions of several agreements signed since 1993. Many provisions of those agreements have been violated by China.
While the government has refrained from acknowledging it in the public domain, there is little doubt that the status quo along the borders has been seriously disturbed by Chinese encroachments and activities. The disengagement of troops at five “friction points” has involved the creation of “buffer zones”, partly on our side of the LAC, and the denial of access to patrolling points our troops were visiting earlier.
The Chinese have not agreed to disengagement in Depsang and Demchok. In Depsang, the Chinese continue to prevent our border forces from resuming patrolling beyond Y-Junction to five patrolling points. There is a similar denial of access to traditional patrolling routes in Demchok. The LAC has become live and unstable, with enhanced and entrenched deployment of troops and military hardware, along with robust development of border infrastructure by both sides.
It will not be desirable for India to accept this “new normal” along the LAC and “move on”. However, the challenge involved in any reset in ties goes well beyond the border issue, even though it has again come to occupy the central space in the relationship. Well before the deadly clash in the Galwan Valley, India-China ties were bedevilled by a host of problems.
The worldviews of the two countries had become increasingly divergent, with growing suspicions about each other’s strategic intentions. In India, China was seen as obstructing its rise and preventing it from realising its interests and aspirations like permanent membership of the UN Security Council, inclusion in the Nuclear Suppliers Group, and its legitimate role in South Asia and the Indian Ocean Region.
On the Chinese side, there were strong apprehensions about India’s closer alignment with the United States (US). The expanding bilateral trade was becoming increasingly lopsided in favour of China and anxieties were mounting in India about dependencies on China for key products.
Even before the Chinese intrusions in May 2020, the policy of welcoming investment from China was being revisited. In a significant policy shift, Press Note 3 issued on April 17, 2020, put all foreign direct investment (FDI) from China in the prior approval category. Earlier, in November 2019, India had decided not to join the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership primarily because of the concerns linked to China. Post-Galwan, these structural challenges in the relationship have become sharper as the trust deficit has deepened and the geopolitical context has become more contentious. China is now inclined to look at its relations with India through the prism of its strategic contestation with the US. It is making a misjudgment in underestimating India’s agency.
While pressing India to accept de-linkage between the border issue and overall relations, China seeks incremental gains along the LAC (as the foiled incursion into the Yangtse area of Arunachal Pradesh in December 2022 showed) and maintains a coercive stance through grey zone operations to consolidate those gains. It wishes to keep Indian troops bogged down along the borders, with the attendant cost and difficult trade-off in the allocation of military budget (for instance, lesser priority to maritime wherewithal).
While building up its own economic and military capabilities, India has more explicitly worked with the US, Quad and other like-minded countries to reinforce its deterrence vis-à-vis China through an unstated strategy of balancing. China’s narrative on a host of issues like the Belt and Road Initiative, “Asia for Asians”, and its behaviour in the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea has been questioned by India. It has also taken measures to reduce dependencies on China-dominated supply chains by developing domestic capabilities through production-linked incentives (PLI) in 14 sectors, tapping alternative supply sources, banning over 350 Chinese apps and close scrutiny of FDI inflows from China. This policy of de-risking is a difficult and protracted but necessary process.
Given these fundamental differences, there isn’t much room for a reset at present. However, that doesn’t preclude the possibility of improvement in bilateral ties, predicated on the restoration of peace, tranquillity and stability in the border areas without compromising India’s traditional patrolling and grazing rights along the LAC.
India cannot be in a hurry to de-induct additional troops as it is at a disadvantage when it comes to re-induction, given the asymmetry in border infrastructure and the nature of the terrain. However, a situation of enhanced deployment of troops of the two countries in close proximity is also not desirable as it can lead to accidents.
Post-election, the government should seriously consider the resumption of a strategic dialogue with China, which can also be through back channels and special emissaries. The border issue cannot be addressed in isolation, delinked from the exploration of a new equilibrium in the relationship. Going by earlier experience, it is unlikely that the stalemate in the relationship can be resolved at the level of corps commanders or a Working Mechanism for Consultation and Coordination on the border.
The search for a solution to the unstable and potentially dangerous situation along the borders will involve a broader conversation on structural challenges in India-China relations. While a broad stance of engagement is desirable, it must be anchored in realism, deterrence, economic security and the balancing of China as the country’s primary strategic challenge.
However, it will be prudent to avoid investing high expectations in summit-level meetings. The Chinese are traditionally averse to using meetings at the highest level as platforms for negotiations on contentious issues. In past interactions with China, summit talks have been fruitful only when preceded by extensive preparations at lower levels.
Navigating our relationship with China and bringing it back to a modicum of normalcy will involve painstaking negotiations, but then, we have come out of difficult periods in bilateral relations in the past. Both sides will have to keep their diplomatic ambitions modest and work towards the restoration of stability along the borders and incremental improvements rather than a reset in ties.
Ashok K Kantha is a former ambassador of India to China. The views expressed are personal
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